1,722 research outputs found
PEP mask therapy for the rehabilitation of a pre-term infant with respiratory distress syndrome: a case report
BACKGROUND: Preterm infants can develop many complications related to organs underdevelopment. Respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) is considered the most important cause of morbidity and mortality in these patients. Traditional therapies for severe RDS, such as mechanical ventilation, come with a potential risk for pneumothorax and bronchopulmonary dysplasia while evidence on chest physiotherapy in preterm infants are controversial in terms of feasibility, tolerability and safety. The use of the positive expiratory pressure (PEP) mask is known in the pediatric field especially in cystic fibrosis for the removal of secretions and lung re-expansion. However, no literature exists on the application and effectiveness of this treatment modality for the respiratory rehabilitation of preterm infants. In this study, we aimed to assess the efficacy of a respiratory rehabilitation protocol based on PEP mask in a preterm infant with respiratory distress syndrome. CASE REPORT: A Caucasian girl born at 26 and 5 weeks of gestational age with respiratory distress syndrome was treated with mechanical ventilation, oxygen therapy and PEP-mask. CLINICAL REHABILITATION IMPACT: Three weeks of PEP mask led to a significant clinical and radiological improvement of the lungâs function with progressive reduction of the oxygen supplement and mechanical ventilation until complete weaning off. Given the absence of literature on this subject, further studies should be conducted to confirm these preliminary observations
The legacy of the COVID-19 pandemics for thyroid cancer patients: towards the application of clinical practice recommendations
The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has acted as a significant stress test for healthcare systems worldwide, due to the need for hospitalization of an increasing number of infected patients. The shift of massive resources to the acute needs of the pandemic led to an upheaval of the usual diagnostic and therapeutic pathways of chronic diseases, including thyroid cancer disease. The motto was to reduce crowding at clinics and to maintain essential health services. However, thyroid cancer clinical practice recommendations already encouraged physicians to reduce âlow-valueâ care: in particular, to avoid screening of general population, to reduce the number of unnecessary biopsies, and to adopt a conservative approach to indeterminate thyroid nodules and low-risk thyroid cancer
Hierarchy plus anarchy in quark masses and mixings
We introduce a new parameterisation of the effect of unknown corrections from
new physics on quark and lepton mass matrices. This parameterisation is used in
order to study how the hierarchies of quark masses and mixing angles are
modified by random perturbations of the Yukawa matrices. We discuss several
examples of flavour relations predicted by different textures, analysing how
these relations are influenced by the random perturbations. We also comment on
the unlikely possibility that unknown corrections contribute significantly to
the hierarchy of masses and mixings.Comment: LaTeX, 18 pages, 16 PS figure
On farm agronomic and first environmental evaluation of oil crops for sustainable bioenergy chains.
Energy crops, and in particular oil crops, could be an important occasion for developing new non food production rows for a new multi-functional agriculture in Italy. In this view, the use of local biomass is a fundamental starting point for the development of a virtuous energy chain that should pursue not only agricultural profitability, but also chain sustainability and that is less dependent on the global market, characterized by instability in terms of biomass availability and price. From this perspective, particular attention must be paid to crop choice on the basis of its rusticity and of its adaptability to local growing conditions and to low input cropping systems. In this context, alike woody and herbaceous biomasses, oil crops such as sunflower and rapeseed should be able to support local agricultural bioenergy chain in Italy. In addition, in a local bioenergy chain, the role of the farmers should not be limited just to grain production; but also grain processing should be performed at farm or consortium level in oilseed extraction plants well proportioned to the cropped surface. In this way, by means of a simple power generator, farmer could thus produce its own thermal and electric energy from the oil, maximizing his profit. This objective could also be achieved through the exploitation of the total biomass, including crop residues and defatted seed meals, that may be considered as fundamental additional economic and/or environmental benefits of the chain. This paper reports some results of three-years on-farm experiments on oil crop chain carried out in the framework of "Bioenergie" project, that was focused to enhance farmers awareness of these criteria and to the feasibility at open field scale of low-input cultivation of rapeseed, sunflower and Brassica carinata in seven Italian regions. In several on-farm experiences, these crops produced more than 800 kg ha-1 of oil with good energy properties. Defatted seed meals could be interesting as organic fertilizers and, in the case of B. carinata, as a biofumigant amendment that could offer a total or partial alternative to some chemicals in agriculture. Furthermore, biomass soil incorporation could contribute to C sequestration, catching CO2 from atmosphere and sinking a part in soil as stable humus. Finally, four different open field experiences carried out again in the second year of the project, have been analysed in order to evaluate their energy and greenhouse gasses balance after cultivation phase
Predictive fermion mass matrix ansatzes in non-supersymmetric SO(10) grand unification
We investigate the status of predictive fermion mass ansatzes which make use
of the grand unification scale conditions , , and in non-supersymmetric SO(10) grand unification.
The gauge symmetry below an intermediate symmetry breaking scale is
assumed to be that of the standard model with either one Higgs doublet or two
Higgs doublets . We find in both cases that a maximum of 5 standard model
parameters may be predicted within experimental ranges. We find that
the standard model scenario predicts the low energy to be in
a range which includes its experimental mid-value 0.044 and which for a large
top mass can extend to lower values than the range resulting in the
supersymmetric case. In the two Higgs standard model case, we identify the
regions of parameter space for which unification of the bottom quark and tau
lepton Yukawa couplings is possible at grand unification scale. In fact, we
find that unification of the top, bottom and tau Yukawa couplings is possible
with the running b-quark mass within the preferred range provided is near the low end of its allowed
range. In this case, one may make 6 predictions which include
within its confidence limits. However unless the running mass , third generation Yukawa coupling unification requires the top mass to be
greater thanComment: 30 pages, 8 figures available on request from
[email protected], Late
The semileptonic B->pi decay in a Constituent Quark-Meson model
We evaluate the form factors describing the exclusive decay B-> pi l nu by
using a Constituent Quark-Meson model based on an effective quark-meson
Lagrangian (CQM). The model allows for an expansion in the pion momenta and we
consider terms up to the first order in the pion field derivatives. We compute
the leading terms in the soft pion limit and consider corrections to this
limit.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX (uses aps, epsf, revtex), formula 26
corrected, discussion enlarged, references updated and other minor change
Scale dependence of quark mass matrices in models with flavor symmetries
Numerical correlations between fermion masses and mixings could indicate the
presence of a flavor symmetry at high energies. In general, the search for
these correlations using low-energy data requires an estimate of leading-log
radiative corrections. We present a complete analysis of the evolution between
the electroweak and the grand unification scales of quark mass parameters in
minimal supersymmetric models. We take GeV and consider all possible
values of . We also analize the possibility that the {\it top}
and/or the {\it bottom} Yukawa couplings result from an intermediate quasifixed
point (QFP) of the equations. We show that the quark mixings of the third
family do {\it not} have a QFP behaviour (in contrast to the masses, the
renormalization of all the mixings is linear), and we evaluate the low-energy
value of which corresponds to . Then we focus on the
renormalization-group corrections to {\it (i)} typical relations obtained in
models with flavor symmetries at the unification scale and {\it (ii)} a
superstring-motivated pattern of quark mass matrices. We show that in most of
the models the numerical prediction for can be {\it corrected} in both
directions (by varying ) due to {\it top} or {\it bottom} radiative
corrections.Comment: LaTeX, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables. Uses epsf.sty. PostScript
available at http://deneb.ugr.es/papers/ugft60.ps.gz Plain LaTeX, Positions
of the figures corrected agai
Association of extent of cannabis use and psychotic like intoxication experiences in a multi-national sample of first episode psychosis patients and controls
BackgroundFirst episode psychosis (FEP) patients who use cannabis experience more frequent psychotic and euphoric intoxication experiences compared to controls. It is not clear whether this is consequent to patients being more vulnerable to the effects of cannabis use or to their heavier pattern of use. We aimed to determine whether extent of use predicted psychotic-like and euphoric intoxication experiences in patients and controls and whether this differs between groups.MethodsWe analysed data on patients who had ever used cannabis (n = 655) and controls who had ever used cannabis (n = 654) across 15 sites from six countries in the EU-GEI study (2010-2015). We used multiple regression to model predictors of cannabis-induced experiences and to determine if there was an interaction between caseness and extent of use.ResultsCaseness, frequency of cannabis use and money spent on cannabis predicted psychotic-like and euphoric experiences (p †0.001). For psychotic-like experiences (PEs) there was a significant interaction for caseness à frequency of use (p < 0.001) and caseness à money spent on cannabis (p = 0.001) such that FEP patients had increased experiences at increased levels of use compared to controls. There was no significant interaction for euphoric experiences (p > 0.5).ConclusionsFEP patients are particularly sensitive to increased psychotic-like, but not euphoric experiences, at higher levels of cannabis use compared to controls. This suggests a specific psychotomimetic response in FEP patients related to heavy cannabis use. Clinicians should enquire regarding cannabis related PEs and advise that lower levels of cannabis use are associated with less frequent PEs
Splicing Reporter Mice Revealed the Evolutionally Conserved Switching Mechanism of Tissue-Specific Alternative Exon Selection
Since alternative splicing of pre-mRNAs is essential for generating tissue-specific diversity in proteome, elucidating its regulatory mechanism is indispensable to understand developmental process or tissue-specific functions. We have been focusing on tissue-specific regulation of mutually exclusive selection of alternative exons because this implies the typical molecular mechanism of alternative splicing regulation and also can be good examples to elicit general rule of âsplice codeâ. So far, mutually exclusive splicing regulation has been explained by the outcome from the balance of multiple regulators that enhance or repress either of alternative exons discretely. However, this âbalanceâ model is open to questions of how to ensure the selection of only one appropriate exon out of several candidates and how to switch them. To answer these questions, we generated an original bichromatic fluorescent splicing reporter system for mammals using fibroblast growth factor-receptor 2 (FGFR2) gene as model. By using this splicing reporter, we demonstrated that FGFR2 gene is regulated by the âswitch-likeâ mechanism, in which key regulators modify the ordered splice-site recognition of two mutually exclusive exons, eventually ensure single exon selection and their distinct switching. Also this finding elucidated the evolutionally conserved âsplice code,â in which combination of tissue-specific and broadly expressed RNA binding proteins regulate alternative splicing of specific gene in a tissue-specific manner. These findings provide the significant cue to understand how a number of spliced genes are regulated in various tissue-specific manners by a limited number of regulators, eventually to understand developmental process or tissue-specific functions
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